Summary of the poem these days by ray gonzález

these years the border closes,
mojados sent back to be found as bodies in the river,
or the cut off head hanging in the tree.
the gang in the barrio where i work sprays
graffiti on my office door, symbol i don’t understand.
the english and spanish don’t belong to me.
they vibrate in drive-by shottings,
boys gasping with laughter and the gun,
betting on who will get shot or dance in prison.

inside a mountain,
a man gets up and wonders what happened to
the cuento passed to him about madness
of a family who fled here, building a stone bridge
to hold water that saved them, made their corn grow.
water seeps into the man’s ears when he lies down .
it trickles into the room where he grow old,
water weeping out of the saguaro so he can cup his hands.
the hills contain graves of mejicanos,
the rumor my father’s ancestors were throat- cutting thieves
buried without markers on their graves.
i read about the psychic in the alamo who encountered
spirits of mejicanos forced into santa ana’s army to die.
he contacts bernardo y juan vergas, brothers trapped
156 years as tourists step on them,
solders revealing they want to rest in peace.
the psychic asks if the ghost of john wayne dwells here.
the brothers tell him wayne wanders among the dead,
never speaks because he can’t find
the spirits of the texas heroes.
i wave to the gang member we hiried
to paint a mural on our center wall,
his arms finishing the blue and yellow feathers
on the aztec face he crated,
showing me how the man trapped in the mountain can find his way out when i enter the old house to find
he is a muralist mixing color from
the bured mirrors under our familiar floors.